


Staring

by Murf1307



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Femininity, First Meetings, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, femmejolras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras has never been comfortable with how he looks.  But usually the staring stops once he’s opened his mouth.  Usually, but there is nothing <em>usual</em> about Grantaire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staring

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tumblr user myrtlewilson; somehow this accidentally became the basis for another 'verse. Whoops.

Enjolras knows what he looks like.  He knows people stare — they always have, always stared and whispered, " _look, look at the boy who looks like a girl_."

It’s taken him ages to be able to brush it off — and usually the staring stops when he’s opened his mouth and been vicious and  _angry_  about the society that would shame him for his femininity.  He keeps his hair long as a  _fuck you_ , and lines his eyes like he’s going to war.  He hates what society thinks of him, and hates more than anything that despite everything, there are days where it still gets to him.

So when he’s walking into second-semester Honors World History, he expects more of the same.  College has been mildly better than the hell that had been high school — he’s made friends beyond Combeferre and Courfeyrac, good friends who don’t care about his looks beyond the way he politicizes himself.

The first day, they get the syllabus and he discovers that they’ll be spending about a quarter of the course discussing the causes, events, and legacy of the French Revolutions and rebellions of the late-18th and 19th centuries.

His lips settle into a thin smile.  He can handle this.

Just like he can handle the staring.

It goes on for a couple of weeks, because he has little to say and none of it political.  He’s laying in wait for the moment it’s time to discuss the Abbé Seiyes and the Third Estate, or the way that modern history classes almost invariably demonize Robespierre and Why They’re Wrong.

One of the people who stares the most is a boy who sits in the back corner of the class, away from the table around which the rest are gathered.  His face is somewhat asymmetrical and his eyes are very, very blue, and Enjolras can practically  _feel_ him looking.

It’s unpleasant.

Enjolras waits, and then it’s time.

"What I’m  _saying_ ," he rebuts some poor unfortunate soul, “is that you’re buying into a system that demonizes radicalism — without fail — and puts vicious,  _factually incorrect_  opinions circulating about historical figures who thus cannot defend themselves."  He pauses.  “Have you ever heard of Marat?  Condorcet?  Saint-Just?"

"N-no," the girl says, shrinking back somewhat in her seat.

"Exactly.  Saint-Just was known as the  _angel of death_ , and Marat was assassinated for his part in the terror.  And yet anyone with a public high school education is going to remember Robespierre as the tyrant who sent all to the guillotine.

"And that’s  _wrong._   Robespierre’s influence saved  _many_  more people from the guillotine during the terror than damned them.  Beyond this, it’s not as though he controlled the workings of the Committee for Public Safety, either."  Enjolras is on a roll.  “Popular perception has damned Robespierre for sins he didn’t commit.  Pay  _attention_  before you buy into what’s been fed you your whole life, or you risk making a fool of yourself one day."

He settles back into his seat, passing his eyes over his classmates, knowing that his expression must border on terrifying.  No one is willing to meet his eyes.

Except the boy in the back.  His blue, blue eyes meet Enjolras’s, and Enjolras isn’t sure what he sees in that look, but he still doesn’t like it.

The professor thanks him for his input and the class continues.

Nobody looks at Enjolras, not even once, except for the boy with the blue eyes.  Enjolras tries to remember his name, tries not to feel the way he’s looking.

He leaves class more quickly than usual.

The next class, nobody looks at him, and something settles in Enjolras until he realizes that the boy with the blue eyes and the bent nose and asymmetrical jaw isn’t there.  Enjolras can settle a bit, can relax.  He debates points about “The Republic of Virtue" almost calmly, and no one looks at him.

Still, something itches at the back of his mind, about that boy, and he can’t shake it.

The first class the following week sees his return, a black eye starting to fade, and Enjolras pretends not to notice.  But his eyes are on Enjolras the whole time, it seems, and Enjolras isn’t sure how to deal with it.

A week after that, he’s had enough.  He lingers after class, loiters — he usually meets Courfeyrac for lunch, but Courfeyrac actually supports this plan, because Courfeyrac is a good friend, and he’s let Enjolras talk about it more than once during study sessions.

Finally, the boy comes out.  At closer range, Enjolras can see his acne scars and one that looks like it’s from a fight.  The black eye is gone, but there are bags under those eyes, and it’s clear he had a hellish weekend.  Enjolras doesn’t particularly care, anymore than he cares about the paintstains on his hands and his collarbone, scarlet and yellow and black.

But he is intrigued.

"You stare at me in class," he says, despite the fact that the boy tries to duck away from him.  “Why?"

The boy flushes.  “I — you’re probably the most beautiful person I’ve ever had the misfortune to share space with for two and a half hours a week each week."

Enjolras feels the sting of  _misfortune_ , and it hardens him.  “It’s distracting."

"Sorry."  The boy scratches the back of his head.  “I’ll stop, if you want."

"Do."

He walks away, and he doesn’t feel the boy looking.  Somehow, he’s not at all relieved by that.

* * *

"You never said you have history with Grantaire," Jehan says, too-casual, as they walk to their philosophy class. 

"Grantaire?" Enjolras echoes.  The name sounds familiar.

Jehan looks at him dubiously.  “My roommate?  The artist?"

Enjolras starts, the memory of paint-stained fingers flashing across his eyes.  “Does he have exceptionally blue eyes?"

"Yes," Jehan says, smiling.  “Though that’s not the first thing most people mention."

"He stares at me in class."  Enjolras brushes his hair back from his face.  “Or, he did.  I told him to stop yesterday after class."

Jehan nods.  “I had a feeling it was something like that."

"What do you mean?"

"He came back from class, threw his bag on the floor, and started painting.  He was at it for hours, and then he just sort of fell into bed when he was finished."  Jehan slides his phone out from the pocket of his floral sweater and thumbs through screens for a while before showing Enjolras.

Enjolras stops dead in his tracks.

The painting is of him, yes, but Enjolras can hardly recognize himself in it.  Painting-him is fierce, almost terrifying.  His hair billows in some wind, and he’s on an almost apocalyptic-looking background.  The detail is absolutely incredible, and Enjolras swallows.

"He — he painted this?"  It’s a pointless question.

Jehan laughs gently.  “He did."  Then his face goes sober.  “But, um.  When I woke up this morning, well."

He swipes to the next picture.  It’s the canvas, but it’s torn up and ruined and _destroyed._

Enjolras makes a noise, distressed.  “But — that was — why?"

"I don’t know.  He was already gone when I got up — he has an early class on Tuesdays."  Jehan puts his phone away, sliding it up his sweater-sleeve.  “What did you  _say_  to him?"

Enjolras recalls the conversation.  “I asked him why he stared at me.  He said I was the ‘most beautiful person he had ever had the  _misfortune_  of sharing space with for two and a half hours a week.’"  His voice is bitter enough to brine. 

"Oh,  _Enjolras,_ " Jehan says, shaking his head.  “Grantaire didn’t mean —"

"Jehan!" Courfeyrac calls from behind them, effectively ending the conversation.

Enjolras doesn’t want to think about what Jehan was going to say.  He’d rather Grantaire not stare at him than Jehan try and convince him it’s a non-issue.

He doesn’t think about it for about a good week.  Grantaire pointedly avoids looking at him in class, and Jehan doesn’t try and bring up the ruined painting.  If the image floats through his head a few times, and if he glances back at Grantaire once or twice, it’s not like it means anything.

Then, during a club meeting, Jehan drags Grantaire along.  They’re late, and Enjolras is in the middle of making a speech on how the electoral college is a detriment to democracy, and he turns when the bell on the cafe door rings, intent on chastising Jehan for being late —

And he just  _stops_ , his stomach turning over, as his eyes meet Grantaire’s.

It’s the first time, he thinks, since he’d asked Grantaire to stop, and there is something harsh and almost electric in the air for an instant.

Then Grantaire averts his eyes and goes over to sit with Joly and Bossuet.  He seems to be trying to fade into the background, and Enjolras tries to let him, he really does, but there’s something — something in that eye contact after a week without so much as a glance, that Enjolras  _can’t._

He almost fumbles over his words as the discussion changes from theoretical politics to current, in-the-trenches issues.

And then Grantaire speaks up, and he’s  _brilliantly intelligent_.  He’s blisteringly witty and sarcastic, and he mocks Enjolras’s every point.

"There’s just  _too much_ , Apollo," Grantaire says, smirk dancing over his lips.  “Every issue you try to fix, there’s always going to be a dozen again.  It’s a hydra, and for all your kalos kagathos, you’re no Heracles."

Enjolras sees red.  “It’s people like you who  _ensure_  that change is so very difficult.  People who have given up before the fight even begins — by God, can you even believe in  _anything?"_

Grantaire freezes.  “Maybe I’ve a vague ambition that way," he says after a moment, meeting Enjolras’s eyes again.  “But maybe not."

And he rises, saluting vaguely in the direction of Jehan and the others, and leaves the cafe.

There is a distinct silence in the wake of his leaving, and Enjolras swings around to watch him leave until he’s no longer visible, because  _shit_.

That wasn’t good. 

"Sorry," he apologizes to the room at large.

"You should be saying that to  _him_ ," Jehan says pointedly.  “Not us, Enjolras."

And then Jehan gets up as well and leaves.  His eyes are sharp and almost vicious, and Enjolras feels as though there’s nothing he can even  _say_.

He’s never seen Jehan angry.  Not like this, anyway.

Everyone is staring now, and a slick worm of dread runs down his back, and he — he has to turn tail and run.  For the first time in  _years_ , he can’t handle the attention.

He makes it back to his dorm in record time, and curls up on his bed.  He flinches when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, his hair a mess and falling out of the pins he’d used to pull it back today.

He curls his hands in his hair and yanks at it for a moment, wanting nothing more than to shear it all off, but he knows he can’t, because that — that would be  _giving in_.

Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes as he wonders if he’d not bothered to grow out his hair, Grantaire wouldn’t have noticed him.  There had been so much detail devoted to the hair in the painting, after all.  He wonders if maybe he hadn’t been so political, so angry, it would have been easier, and he wouldn’t have had so many _eyes_ on him.

He buries his face in his arms, laying face down in his bed, and cries.

The ghost of Grantaire’s eyes burns against his perception, and he sobs because he  _doesn’t understand._   He wipes his eyes with his hands and comes away with streaks of eyeliner, and he can’t stop crying.

There are just too many variables — Grantaire’s stares and his cynicism and that fucking  _painting_ , and Jehan’s anger and the way everyone had seen, everyone had seen him break, right there.  He’d broken and  _fled_  from everything.  He’d sworn he wouldn’t do that again, he hasn’t done that since middle school, when Combeferre was his only friend and people were starting to notice that Enjolras liked his hair long and was curious about the way girls and women painted their faces like they were their own personal canvases.

For a moment, he hates Grantaire, blames him for all of this, and the tears come hot and the sobs wrack him harder because it’s just not  _true._

He’s going to apologize, he tells himself.  He’s going to pull Grantaire aside after class and he’s going to — he’s going to —

He keeps crying, and he’s beyond really even thinking now, when Combeferre comes in and sits down on the bed.  He doesn’t say anything, just rubs his hand up and down Enjolras’s back, steady and quiet and calming.

Between that and the sheer exertion of crying, Enjolras slowly falls asleep.


End file.
